This is the sixth book in your Oscar
Wilde Murder Mysteries series. Do you feel there is there still more for
you to write about him? There is plenty more to write about. Oscar
Wilde’s life was so extraordinary. There were remarkable highs and
incredible lows – the stuff of comedy and tragedy. He knew so many people
– writers, artists, actors, princes, poets, prostitutes, politicians . . .
he met a pope and Mark Twain (though not on the same day): he knew all
types and conditions of men and women – and he travelled widely, in
Europe, in America, in North Africa. The possibilities feel limitless. I
have now written six mysteries. In my head, I have plot outlines for at
least six more. For example, it turns out that Oscar Wilde was a friend
of four men who were among those most often accused of being Jack the
Ripper – so it could be that, thanks to Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle, my
next mystery reveals, at long last, the complete (and unexpected) truth
about the most notorious and brutal murderer of the nineteenth century . .
.

Your Wilde series has been extensively
and positively reviewed. How does that affect you when working on the next
title? The mysteries have been very generously received and that’s
both wonderful and a challenge. It means that I feel I have to keep
raising my game. I want the stories to work as satisfying murder
mysteries – in the tradition of the best of Agatha Christie or Dorothy L
Sayers – and at the same time I want my portrait of Wilde and his circle
to be as accurate and true as possible. When you meet Oscar Wilde or
Arthur Conan Doyle in my stories, I want you to feel you are meeting the
real man. With Wilde there is an extra challenge, too: he was reckoned
the greatest talker of his time! Yes, I can borrow some of the brilliant
things we know he said, but I have to invent quite a few of my own as
well.

This series has been published in 23
countries. Have your fan receptions been different in each country? In
some countries, the real Oscar Wilde – poet, playwright, prisoner – is
almost unknown. There they read the books simply because they are
historical murder mysteries. They assume that Oscar Wilde is entirely my
invention! In Russia, they are much more aware of Arthur Conan Doyle than
they are of Oscar Wilde, so they are more interested in him than in Oscar
– and on the cover of one of the Russian editions I see that they have
dressed Oscar Wilde in a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker and given him a
Sherlock Holmes pipe to smoke.

You have exhaustively studied the life
and personality of Oscar Wilde, a man who was born almost a century before
you. Do you view the distance of time as a benefit or challenge to your
understanding of the man? My father was born in 1910, only a decade
after Oscar Wilde’s death. Arthur Conan Doyle was still very much alive
then. Bedales, the English boarding school I was sent to as a boy in the
1960s, was founded by a man – John Badley - who knew Oscar and Constance
Wilde: their older son, Cyril, was a pupil at the school. Mr Badley was
still alive when I was at Bedales. I took tea with him on Wednesday
afternoons during term-time. We played Scrabble and talked about Oscar
Wilde. Yes, I knew a man who knew Oscar Wilde. And now, in 2013, I find
that I am a friend of Oscar Wilde’s only grandson, Merlin Holland. The
events I am describing took place more than a century years ago and yet,
curiously, I feel very close to them. And it’s not just the people I feel
close to: I feel I know the places, too. With all the books in the series
I try to visit the actual locations – and, of course, many of the
buildings of the 1880s and 1890s are still with us and some are
comparatively unchanged. For example, when I was writing Oscar Wilde
and the Vatican Murders I had a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour of
the Vatican and, while researching this book, I was privileged to spend
time at Reading Gaol. I have sat in the actual cell where Wilde was
incarcerated. I have walked along the prison corridors. I have stood in
the execution room.

What is the most interesting or striking
feedback you have received about your Oscar Wilde series? Oscar
Wilde’s only grandson, Merlin Holland, is a considerable authority on his
grandparents’ lives and the editor of the Collected Letters of Oscar
Wilde. He has read all the books in my series of mysteries and, as well
as being very generous about them, has put me right on details of fact when
I have gone wrong. Having his feedback has been invaluable. I have also
had generous and helpful feedback from people who knew Wilde’s friend,
Lord Alfred Douglas, and from members of the Sherlock Holmes Society of
London. When writing these books I want to ‘get it right’. It’s a murder
mystery: it’s historical fiction, but many of the characters were real
people (more than you would think) and I want the reality to be real.
When this book was first published in London, we held a party at the
Cadogan Hotel. The hotel features in Oscar Wilde and a Game Called
Murder and is the hotel where Wilde was arrested and taken for trial in
1895. At the party the guests included Wilde’s grandson and
great-grandson, several actors who had played Wilde on stage or screen,
the priest from the church where the Wildes were married and
representatives from Reading Gaol, including the present Governor and a
prison officer who had served in the prison for more than thirty years. He
said to me, ‘The Reading Gaol in your book – it’s the real thing.’ That
pleased me very much.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol tackles a darker side of Wilde than previous titles in the
series. A sense of isolation pervades the harsh environment of the jail,
but here Wilde also endures absence of Arthur Conan Doyle, with whom he
has solved mysteries in previous titles. How did these more somber,
introspective elements affect the writing process for you? Oscar
Wilde’s life was a roller-coaster ride and my series of mysteries must
reflect that. To put myself into the right frame of mind for this book, I
visited the prison and I re-read all the letters we have that date from
the time of Wilde’s incarceration, including the long confessional letter
that he wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas, now known as ‘De Profundis’. At the
British Library I was able to read – and touch – the original manuscript
of the letter. Seeing Wilde’s handwriting on the prison notepaper was a
moving experience. I also visited Wilde’s grave in Paris while writing
the book and – quite as moving – visited the grave of his wife, Constance,
in Genoa.

Even more than 100 years after his death,
Wilde’s works are widely studied and appreciated. Why do they have this
timeless relevance? What makes Wilde such an enduringly fascinating
person? Wilde’s works stand on their own merit. The Importance of
Being Earnest is, arguably, the best comedy written in the English
language. It is a play that will stand the test of time. Recently I
appeared on stage in a musical version of the play (as Lady Bracknell) and
the more familiar I became with the play the more I admired it. As I get
to know Wilde the man better, I don’t admire him more, but I do find him
ever more fascinating. During his life he went out of his way to make
himself a mythic personality – and, incredibly, the myth has endured. The
tragedy that followed the triumphs helped, no doubt. And, like Marilyn
Monroe, James Dean and Elvis Presley, he died before his time. He is a
wonderful character to write about because he is both touched by genius
and flawed. He is somebody you want to meet and, when I am writing these
books, I do feel that I am meeting him.

You certainly have extensive experience
studying and writing about Oscar Wilde. If you could choose another person
as the subject of a historical fiction novel, who would it be and why? I
am happy enough living in the twenty-first century, but if I had to live
in another epoch I would choose the nineteenth century, so that I could meet
the giants of that era who created characters and worlds that are still
alive today – characters like Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula, Dr Jekyll
and Mr Hyde, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. And once I had exhausted
the possibilities of the Victorian age, I would move back to the
Elizabethan age. Queen Elizabeth I was a remarkable woman and writing
about her would be a fascinating challenge. Perhaps I could find a way to
team her up with the greatest writer of them all, William Shakespeare? It
is strange: Shakespeare knew so much about us and yet we know so little
about him. I would like to discover more.

Will your next writing project focus on
Oscar Wilde or will you go in a new direction? I have recently
completed a play (with music by Susannah Pearse) about Lewis Carroll and a
young actress called Isa Bowman who was one of the first to play the part
of Alice in Wonderland on stage. I am currently writing a one-man show
called Looking for Happiness and editing the new edition of the Oxford
Dictionary of Humorous Quotations. And then it’s back to Oscar and
Arthur. I think it has to be. One of my forebears was a Victorian
journalist called George R Sims (famous in his day, almost forgotten now):
he claimed to be the first man to identify Jack the Ripper. I have
uncovered a stash of his unpublished papers. I now know things I feel the
world should know.

Wilde was known for his exceptional wit.
Can you share one of your favorites of his quotes? Now did Oscar
Wilde say this? Or did I invent it for him to say? I really do not
recall, but I like the line because it reminds me why so many of us love a
traditional murder mystery. ‘There is nothing quite like an unexpected
death for lifting the spirits.’